Key Points

Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information has reported. A source familiar with the matter told CNBC they could “confirm acquisition [by Nvidia] has been part of ongoing and recent talks.”

*Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face immediately responded to CNBC requests for comment.*

The deal would broaden Nvidia’s position in open-source AI and further across the AI technology stack.

Nvidia has agreed to buy open-source platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported, citing a person with knowledge of the deal.

Deal talks began after Hugging Face, an open-source artificial intelligence platform developers use to collaborate, test and share tools, received acquisition interest from another suitor, according to The Information.

Business Insider separately reported that Nvidia had been “in talks” to acquire Hugging Face. The outlet reported last week that Hugging Face has been working with a bank to evaluate bidders’ interest in the startup, citing people familiar with the matter.

A source familiar with the matter told CNBC they could “confirm acquisition [by Nvidia] has been part of ongoing and recent talks.” They spoke anonymously to discuss details that are not public.

Hugging Face and Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If completed, the acquisition would put one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and working with open-source AI models under Nvidia’s ownership, expanding the chipmaker’s reach further into the software and model ecosystem.

Nvidia, whose blockbuster earnings Wednesday prompted shares to rise 4% in after-hours trading, has made a series of deals in the past year, including a $20 billion licensing deal with AI chip startup Groq.

Siddy Jobe, a fund manager at Eonopolis Exponential Technologies funds, said it made sense for Nvidia to target a company like Hugging Face, as Nvidia has made it clear that it is not looking to discriminate between closed and open-source models.

“I think Nvidia is very much a community, a platform-based company, and in that respect, I think Hugging Face fits perfectly within that. There is this five-layer cake from Nvidia, and foundational models are one of them,” Jobe told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

“It is clear that Nvidia wants to be integrated in the entire stack vertically, going from energy to foundational models and also to applications,” he added.

Hacking incident

Hugging Face was recently at the center of a hacking incident that raised concerns about the rapid evolution of powerful AI and cybersecurity tools.

Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, a proponent of open-source models, blamed engineering mistakes for the recent attack on Hugging Face and said his company used an Nvidia version of a Chinese open model to resolve it.

He told CNBC earlier this month, “AI cybersecurity is going to become a huge market in the U.S. and in the world.”

“In this market, probably open models will be kings,” Delangue added.